Su Qingluan looked at the two younger ones and asked, "How is it? Is it not as sour as you thought?"
Su Xueyan raised her little face from the bowl, her mouth slick with food. "Sister, this pickled cabbage is delicious! It's better than the previous ones! The previous ones were bitter!"
Su Qingluan thought about it for a moment and understood: the Su family probably didn't have any extra money to buy fatty pork belly before, so they could only use a little bit of cooking oil, or even no cooking oil at all.
In this case, the sauerkraut cannot absorb the surrounding oil, so the sour taste is particularly obvious. Children have a much more sensitive taste than adults, so they may confuse the sour taste with the bitter taste.
So she smiled and reached out to touch Su Xueyan's little head: "Xueyan likes sauerkraut made this way. How about we do it this way from now on?"
Yang smiled and said, "Daya, it's no wonder you think so since you have no memories. In winter, it's hard to leave the village, especially when it snows heavily. The snow almost reaches our knees, and sometimes even reaches our waists for some older children. A little one like Sanya would disappear in the snow!"
Hearing this, Su Xueyan covered her mouth in surprise, and even Su Qingluan was very surprised: this was the first year since she traveled through time, and although she knew that winter would not be easy, she had no specific idea to what extent - after all, she lived in a building with heating in her previous life, and the idea of people freezing to death in winter was too far away for her.
"There are a few families in the village who raise pigs," Yang sighed, "but usually they either kill them and sell them for money, or use the old sows for breeding and piglet production. Since they can't go out, where's the pork for everyone to eat in the winter?"
Su Qingluan smiled and said, "Even if there's no fat, we can refine the lard and put it inside the blanket. The weather is cool now, so the lard won't go bad for a long time. It would be good to stew sauerkraut with it later."
What's more, if it really snows to the point of reaching people's knees in winter as Yang said, this level of snow must mean that the temperature is far below zero degrees.
In other words, in winter, the entire natural climate is like a natural refrigerator. Many foods placed in ice and snow can be kept fresh for one or two months - as long as these foods are not stored in places exposed to sunlight.
But this is also very easy to do, just dig a cellar - what's more, there is a ready-made one in the Su family's back garden, it's just not that big.
"Mother, I want another bowl!" Su Xuanhe held up the empty bowl, but Su Guangfu slapped it back with a chopstick: "You are so old, can't you help yourself? Take as much as you can eat, and don't leave any leftovers!"
When Su Xuanhe came back with the rice, Su Qingluan teased, "It seems that you really like this pickled cabbage stewed with meat. It's rare to see you asking for more rice after eating a full bowl."
Su Xuanhe said with a stern air, "I'm just living the life of 'drinking while the wine lasts'. Since we can't eat pork in the winter, I'll try to eat as much as I can while I can."
Su Qingluan sneered: "Why, if you eat a little more today, you won't have to eat tomorrow?"
"Tsk, this is called 'putting on weight in autumn', okay?" Su Xuanhe curled his lips at his elder sister and picked up another piece of pork belly.
The plump slice of meat shone with a pale golden glow under the dim light, looking very tempting. Su Xuanhe swallowed it in one gulp and glanced at Su Qingluan with a cocky look on his face.
But the next moment, he was slapped in the face by his younger sister: "Brother, you're still in school, haven't the teachers taught you anything yet? 'Putting on weight' is the time when the Beginning of Autumn just started, and it's already past the Beginning of Autumn!"
"Hmph, eat yours, little girl!" Su Xuanhe said as he picked up a piece of blood tofu for his sister.
Both Su Xuanhe and Su Xueyan were eating blood tofu for the first time. They didn’t even know what this black and red “red sausage” was.
So the two little guys didn’t touch this “unknown object” before.
Seeing an extra piece of blood sausage in her bowl, Su Xueyan instinctively disliked this black thing because of her "appearance control" stance. She frowned slightly and picked at the blood sausage: "Sister, is this delicious? It's so black and scary..."
Su Qingluan smiled and said, "I, your sister, have never made anything 'unpalatable'. It's all edible anyway, so why not try it first? If you can't eat it, just throw it to me."
With Su Qingluan's "safety net" guarantee, Su Xueyan happily picked up the piece of blood tofu in the bowl and took a small bite.
In fact, Su Xuanhe gave his sister some blood sausage as a prank. After all, he had never eaten it before and was very cautious about this black thing - in short, he was timid and didn't dare to eat it.
Su Xueyan had no idea of her brother's sinister intentions behind her back, and she chewed the blood sausage in her mouth carefully - although she didn't know what the food in her mouth was.
After a moment, Su Qingluan asked, "How is it? Is it unpalatable?"
Su Xueyan shook her head: "It's not bad, it's very fragrant, like eating firmer tofu, but smoother than tofu, and you can taste the meaty aroma that tofu doesn't have - the tofu has a strong taste of beans." As she spoke, she subconsciously wrinkled her nose.
Su Qingluan smiled and said, "You haven't come out yet. Your description is quite apt." In fact, the method of making blood tofu in the previous life was indeed similar to that of stuffing blood sausage. In a sense, Su Xueyan really hit the jackpot by accident.
"But..." The little girl slowly spit out the blood sausage casing, "This sausage's 'skin' doesn't taste good. It feels like I'm eating something really hard..."
Su Qingluan laughed out loud when she heard that: "That's not edible, you don't have to eat it."
Su Xuanhe watched his sister eat with such relish that he felt a bit eager to try it himself. He carefully tasted a bite of the blood sausage and it was indeed fresh, fragrant and refreshing. It had the delicate texture of tofu without the beany flavor of tofu. Instead, it had the rich aroma of meat and the fragrance of spices like scallions and ginger.
And with the contrast of sauerkraut, the blood tofu, which originally had a greasy and fishy taste, became even more refreshing.
"Sister, what is this? It's delicious!" Su Xueyan asked.
"This is red and black. Could it be offal? Just like the pig stomach in offal soup." Su Xuanhe guessed.
Su Qingluan weighed it over and finally didn't say the three words "it's pig blood". After all, children are still quite resistant to things like "blood", and objectively speaking, the two little ones in the family are not the brave ones.
So she finally just mumbled, "Well, yes, that's about right."
For the sake of her brother and sister's appetite, let her keep this little secret that is not really a secret - it's not a big deal anyway.
As it turned out, Su Qingluan's concerns were justified, because one day in the future, after the two of them knew what the "black tofu" they were eating was, they could not eat blood tofu for a while.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
